Focus

The Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) Regional Report for sub-Saharan Africa offers an in-depth analysis of the region’s progress towards gender equality. The report draws from SIGI’s 14 variables that measure gender-based discrimination in social norms, practices and laws.

Women’s economic empowerment is widely recognised as one of the most effective means of catalysing positive social transformation in favour of gender equality with wide-ranging positive impacts for women and their communities as well as national economies. Recent studies corroborated by OECD research all come to the same conclusion: economies are more resilient, productive and inclusive when they reduce gender inequalities and actively support women’s equal participation in all spheres of life.

The second Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) country study was launched in Burkina Faso in May 2016, in partnership with the Burkinabe Ministry of Women, National Solidarity and the Family and the National Statistics and Demographic Institute. SIGI country studies aim to provide a deeper understanding of how discrimination against women plays out at the sub-national level, particularly in relation to compounding factors such as urban/rural differences, socio-economic status, ethnicity and education level.

The OECD Development Centre highlights the central role of discriminatory social norms in perpetuating gender inequalities in non-OECD countries. Work includes looking at the underlying causes of gender inequality through the Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) and engaging in a dialogue through the platform Wikigender. The Development Centre produces research linking social norms with a range of development outcomes on a regular basis as well as new research, such as migration and time use.